As you may know, Eric and I were in London last week to lead our JBoss cohosted event about Open Source ECM. During these two hours, we shared our vision of ECM and how customers can rely on Open Source solutions to run supported applications that answers their business needs.

I'd like to warmly thank all of those who were there and shared this moment with us! Hope you had a great time guys !

For all of you that missed the conference or who want to play the slides again, here is the downloadable version of the presentation :

• Nuxeo Corporate Presentation
• Nuxeo 5 : a real open source supported software

The business breakfast we set up with Euriware las week was a great success !!! We were in a nice room opening on a fancy garden at the House of Latin America. We enjoyed presenting our open source ECM solutions and business offers. But I have to confess that we encountered a little problem... There were not enough chairs and a lot of interested customers :) Trust me I love this kind of problems!

Next month, I'll be in Bamako to talk about the interest of open source ECM in Africa and in Berlin to present Nuxeo and our business approach during the JBoss World.

Stay tuned!

Euriware and Nuxeo give you a good reason to wake up early in the morning ! We'll have the great pleasure to welcome you next thursday (10/19/2006) from 8 to 11 AM for an information breakfast, to share our experience about Open Source ECM projects and document management.

This meeting will give you the keys to transform your Open Source ECM project into a real success and to optimize the use of Open Source softwares.

I'll be pleased to present Nuxeo's document management products (including a live demonstration) and to discuss with you about the advantages of Open source ECM solutions.

And last but not least... As a cherry on top of the cake, Areva NC will be there to make a testimonial about their own success based on Nuxeo's solutions.

Be there and bring friends !

My two last months were under the sign of Africa. I put my RYG Nuxeo’s T-shirt on and start to work. In two months I traveled to west and to east Africa. Two goals: launch Nuxeo Africa in west Africa, and improve relationships with our partners and customers in Madagascar. That means lot of hours spent in the sky and… lot of excitement about Open Source ECM advocacy and business development on Mother Earth.

Trip one - Nuxeo Africa inception in Dakar, Senegal

Nuxeo Africa is our latest subsidiary, its goals are simple : capitalize on our clients in west Africa and develop business in the subregion (Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, etc.). We already work in Senegal with great partners such as OpenSys and Genesys and we may count on the support of our customers like the Government Agency for IT development in Senegal and the Central Bank of West African States.

All the persons I’ve seen during my trip showed a great interest about Nuxeo and its ECM solutions, especially financial companies, banks, TelCo companies and government agencies. Many of them are currently in the process of validating open source ECM as their global ECM platform using Nuxeo’s offer. We give them an brand new sight on the software industry. Once again the focus on added value services (not on license fees) that we allow, is very appreciated.

All the lights are green, the market is there. All the prospects I’ve seen seamed to share the same enthusiasm. Especially at the end of the conference I gave about the interest of open source ECM solution in the african context and the strategy of Nuxeo Africa. Independence, cost reduction, ROI, needs adaptation… different continent, same leitmotiv, same solutions !

All I received in Dakar was interest, good vibes and a real motivation to go further. Trust me I can’t wait to go back there to launch our next project. And, if you wonder… yes, parties are hot around!

Trip two - Civil State deployment and local partnership empowerment in Antananarivo, Madagascar

In two years (I landed there for the first time 2 years ago) Madagascar changed a lot, of course there’re still old european cars (like Renault 4L or Citroen 2CV) used as cabs, zebus and rice based main dishes with exotic names like Romazava or Ravitoto. But… now there are WiFi hotspots almost everywhere in Tana (the short-name for Antananarivo, Madagascar capital) and broadband internet will be there in less than a year. I can not wait this moment, which means that we’ll be able to work more efficiently with our partners and clients.

Since two years we work in Tana with e-Sight, a malagasy IT company, to build the first open source civil state management application for the City of Antananarivo. This project, financed by the AIMF and lead by the City of Antananarivo, is a great step for the government: reliable civil state acts allow reliable ID card distribution, citizenship management, taxing, etc... And all together we turn this project into a success that we can be proud of.

Today, the City of Antananarivo runs Nuxeo État-Civil (since one year) in all of its districts and manages about 6000 civil acts a day. This application is a real success and provide a great experience to the citizens of Antananarivo: Faster delivery of acts Faster search of older acts No loss of data For the government, it means auditable act delivery process, no more fake acts hence less corruption.

Nuxeo ECM Platform is, maybe surprisingly, used there to manage critical data in a very high-availability environment. We have a multi-servers architecture, a PDF renderer engine, an audit engine and an AJAX forms framework. And for Civil State Officers… it simply works well! :-)

Another point of this project was about our ability to transfer technical competence to the local technical teams. After two training sessions, the team of e-Sight is now able to maintain the application and most important make it evolve. This case is the perfect illustration of the interest of using open source solution in Africa : get technical independence, high-level technical skills and low cost deployment.

But this is not the end and we have other opportunities in Madagascar. It’s still confidential but I hope being able to blog about that soon. So... stay tuned!

Africa from Paris

Here, at Nuxeo HQ we’re sure that Africa will become a major player in Open Source development. We feel to act like pioneers. I’m quite sure that in a few years, we’ll be very proud of what we participate to build today.

During the past five years, here at Nuxeo, we have built some of the largest e-government projects by providing great ECM solution for french ministries or governmental agencies. Today, CPS is the mainstream ECM Framework in the french administration. This success has naturaly lead lot of industrial companies to consider open source ECM as a suitable alternative. But they still have lot of questions about open source. The licencing model is one of those, but they also want to understand the business model that sustained Open source companies or Open source vendors such as Nuxeo. A big part of my job consists to explain how open source ECM solutions may benefit them. And most of the time, it works :)

When you’re talking with this kind of clients, you’re not talking to early adopters. They got internal processes, quality is the core of their businesses. They don’t have time to try, they want solutions that work and the most important they want solutions that can make them save money.

For them the choice of open source has to be a smart move in a cost oriented strategy motivated by ROI (I had to unleash the “R” word). These words may sound a little too marketingly correct, but believe me when it’s time to kick Documentum’s ass they are big part of the picture.

I’m not talking about revolution here but only how to optimize IT investment in ECM.

Services and only services !

What do we sell to our client ? We don’t sell the software and we don’t sell neither the right to use it. All of that is free. What we’re providing to our client is services to fulfill their needs. In our business model the software is only the very apropriate medium to provide these services.

What determines the cost of an open source project ? The cost is defined exclusively by your needs and how far they are from the framework you are using. Generaly, it’s based on three factors :

• Framework adaptation
• new component development
• Integration in a global system

When you are using an easily extensible and mature framework, as CPS, the service cost is not very different from non open source vendor. But what I’m talking about here is services and only services... This is the only thing you have to pay for : productive work and nothing else (no payable usage right, no lincence cost, etc.).

When you are using a proprietary ECM solution you need to pay licences. The amount of these licences may double the cost of your project because it’s not directly based on what you need but on other criterias like the number of users accessing the application,, the number of servers running and sometimes even the number of processors you need to make it work.

The cost analisys of a project cannot be limited  to the build phase, because after building it you’re supposed to use it. That’s what we call the run period, and that’s when open source application becomes an amazing source of benefits. You don’t have to pay anything to enjoy your application. Even the support services are an option. Your application may become a success and be adopted by lots of your employees to make them work faster and reuse their knowledge efficiently without extra cost.

What I'm saying here isn't about big maths, I’m sure I don’t need to get further... You already got me.

And what about subscription ?

Another alternative offered by open source ECM is that you can use out-of-the-box solutions.

At Nuxeo, we’re implementing several packaged applications like CPS Courrrier or CPS OpenSpace. Feel free to download them and of course to use them. I’m pretty sure you’re going to enjoy them. But that’s not the point of this post.

When you are using an application in an industrial context, you need to be sure that you’re going to get all the support and all the functionnal and technical help you need. I think that an open source vendor has to provide such professional services. So here at Nuxeo, we have already launched training and certification programs and we’re about to unleash our subscription program. I will talk about it as soon as it will be fully operational.

Subscription model provides lots of advantages for companies. It helps them manage the application, test it, upgrade it, resolve the problem they encounter by using it. But most of all, it gives them the insurance that their application will work the way they want to.

Like Eric B. and Rakim said before, you got to follow the leader. Top open source companies like Jboss and Redhat have adopted this business model, it simply works well and provides a great professional open source experience to their client.

And what about a conclusion ?

At Nuxeo we believe that realizing projects allows us to constantly innovate and create client oriented applications and not only secret labs powered ones. By acting on the field, we’re able to know what the market want and how to lead the software evolution. Projects and subscriptions are complementary activities and we have to provide both of them.

Why open source is a smart move for companies looking for professional ECM solution ? Because it’s cost oriented and only depends on your needs and now you can rely on open source software vendor like Nuxeo to get professional services. Moreover, it’s up to you to make the move you judge as the smartest one...

Last day I was reading a post of Luis Sala from Alfresco and, I have to admit it, I was amazed how he turned to a better self since he met open source.

He seemed to me like vader quitting his mask and seeing the world with his own eyes : stop hiding things to his clients, have fun doing his job, stop selling licences, etc.

Is open source a miracle potion ? I really don’t think so. Nethertheless, working in the open source industry is really amazing. I agree with you on this point Luis. It’s a fantastic approach to satisfy our client’s needs and the best way to produce software. Sadly, open source can not make better personns of us. Personnaly, I prefer let that to psychotherapy.

Be fair and square, that’s how we roll at Nuxeo, since the beginning, and that’s how we build our success. I’m very happy to see that our vision is now shared by people that first laughed at us. Seems like Gandhi’s always right...

Just a few words to make an echo to Marc Fleury's last post. Definitly, we, at nuxeo, chose the red pill side of business not the cubical one. We're very proud of that. We think we can realize great things by being creative not by being a sheep.

What we're doing here is about defining a new business model and demonstrate that it is possible to be successful and innovative. We did it with CPS, the most powerfull open source ECM Platform and we're doing it again with Apogée in a rich client approach.

We have a lot in common with Jboss Group in the way we see the open source market. I hope we'll have the occasion to meet and make business together, I think it'll be good for both of our companies.

It's more than a job, it's a way of life and we also have trashy pictures :)

PS: Marc, next time we're in NYC, we would be really delighted to spend a night with you

Jeudi 2 février 2006, 15h30, le TGV nous (Florent Guillaume, Thierry Delprat et moi-même) emmène vers Lille. Une heure et quatre minutes plus tard, nous arrivons au Grand-Palais pour inaugurer l'un des plus importants projets que nous ayons réalisé : le portail régional des chambres des métiers et de l'artisanat du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais. Il s'agit d'un portail collaboratif et applicatif, entièrement basé sur CPS, destiné à offrir des services à valeur ajoutée aux 34 000 des artisans de la région.

Durant le speech d'inauguration, le président de la chambre des métiers a salué l'intérêt de l'outil pour les artisans et présenté l'essentiel de ces fonctions :

• Accès personnalisé pour chaque artisan (identifiant / mot de passe)
  
• Accès au répertoire des métiers
• Tableaux de bord personnalisés
• Webcarte (page de présentation pour chaque artisan)
• Agenda partagé
• Webmail
• Espaces collaboratifs
• Zones d'échange avec la chambre des métiers
• Gestion de la relation client pour la chambre des métiers
• Formation ouverte à distance pour les apprentis
• Gestion de l'apprentissage entre les artisans et les CFA
  

La mise en service du portail sera accompagnée d'un plan d'envergure à destination des artisans afin que ces derniers puissent accéder à du matériel informatique à prix préférentiel. L'objectif est de fournir une infrastructure suffisante afin que 5 000 artisans puissent utiliser les technologies de l'information en intégrant le portail dans leur quotidien professionnel dans les 18 prochains mois.

Le préfet de région a également participé à la manifestation et n'a pas manqué de promouvoir l'usage de logiciels libres dans le cadre de ce projet évoquant notamment la possibilité pour les autres chambres des métiers de réutiliser la plate-forme si elles le désirent.

Ce projet représente l'un des plus importants projets basé sur la plateforme CPS et certainement l'un des plus ambitieux réalisé en Open Source (les chambres des métiers y ont investi plus d'un million d'euros). Il a été réalisé en collaboration avec Unilog et a permis de contribuer à CPS sous bien des aspects notamment au travers des problématiques d'annuaire, de monté en charge et de services collaboratifs.

Nous tenons à remercier les chambres régionales du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais pour nous avoir fait confiance et pour avoir contribuer à faire de CPS ce qu'il est aujourd'hui et nous souhaitons que ce projet original et audacieux remporte le succès qu'il mérite !!!

Ce post vient en réaction à un article paru dans le journal du net à propos des éditeurs de logiciels libres et des rapports qu'ils entretiennent avec les communautés et les acteurs économiques de l'informatique. Cet article est incomplet car il ne présente pas les cas dans lesquels un éditeur de logiciel libre est à la tête d'une communauté. Il s'agit pourtant du modèle suivi par Zope et par Nuxeo. Un éditeur de logiciel libre a plusieurs missions à sa charge :

• Maintenir un logiciel et le distribuer,
• Définir et suivre une roadmap,
• Animer une communauté,
• Assurer la liaison entre les communautés du logicel libre et les organisations économiques.

Présenté de cette façon, il ne s'agit pas simplement d'un empaqueteur / diffuseur de logiciels libres existants mais bien d'un créateur de logiciel leader d'une communauté. L'exemple de Zope en la matière est frappant, Zope Corp est à la tête des développements de la plateforme, et anime la communauté des développeurs contributeurs. Il ne s'agit pas d'un exemple isolé puisque ce modèle est suivi par IBM pour Eclipse, Sun pour OpenOffice.org et Nuxeo pour CPS.

Un autre aspect différenciant de l'éditeur de logiciel libre est son rôle de tiers de mutualisation. En effet, il assure que les projets menés autour de la plateforme :

• Convergent,
• Respectent les règles de développement,
• Ne développent pas deux fois le même module logiciel.

La mutualisation et la générisation des modules réalisés dans le cadre de projet, de R&D ou par les membres de la communauté représentent le coeur de l'activité d'un éditeur de logiciel libre. Cette démarche permet de satisfaire les clients faisant appel à ses services en leur apportant des garanties supplémentaires :

• Les modules développés dans le cadre de projets puis générisés profitent du support de la communauté,
• Les clients ne payent pas deux fois pour une même fonctionnalité,
• Les projets sont facilement maintenables car réalisés à partir d'un socle commun tendant vers la généricité.

Cette approche innovante permet de créer des synergies de fait et participent à faire évoluer plus rapidement les technologies. En faisant appel à un éditeur de logiciels libres certains clients bénéficient des avancées des autres, ou financent des fonctionnalités complémentaires. Des organisations sans relation explicites participent au même effort de développement logiciel. Des SSII concurrentes peuvent bénéficer des développements réalisés dans le cadre de projets distincts pour accélerer leur processus de développement. Les bénéfices du développement distribué sont nombreux mais reposent sur l'action de l'éditeur de logiciel libre et de son interaction avec une communauté repensée au sens large composée de clients, de développeurs et éventuellement de SSII.

L'AIMF (association internationale des maires francophones) vient de mettre à jour son site web et nous pouvons constater avec plaisir que les logiciels libres y sont mis à l'honneur dès la page d'accueil.

L'association annonce dans un article sa collaboration avec Nuxeo dans le cadre du projet de mise en oeuvre d'une infrastructure de gestion d'état civil à Madagascar entièrement basée sur l'utilisation de logiciels libres sur les serveurs comme sur les postes de travail.

L'utilisation et le financement de projets basés sur l'utilisation de logiciels libres permet à l'AIMF de disposer de solutions adaptées qui peuvent être facilement déployées sur différents sites ou dans différents pays. L'association peut dès lors participer à la modernisation des états francophones en mettant à leur disposition des solutions performantes sans supporter de coûts de licence. L'AIMF ne finance qu'une seule fois les logiciels qu'elle diffuse.

L'utilisation de logiciels libres peut ainsi devenir un formidable vecteur de développement informatique et économique pour les pays du sud. L'informatisation et la réduction de la fracture numérique se base sur de nouveaux principes :

• Acquisition technologique durable
• Faible coût d'acquisition (investissement sur la compétence)
• Facilité de déploiement et de mutualisation des réalisations logicielles
• Développement des compétences et des initiatives locales

La bataille de l'informatisation des pays du sud se situe aujourd'hui sur le terrain de la formation et de l'acquisition de savoir favorisée par l'utilisation des logiciels libres. Nous pouvons espérer que ces derniers choisiront la voie de l'indépendance technologique et du développement de savoir faire à haute valeur ajoutée en utilisant des outils qu'ils sauront maîtriser et enrichir.